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“During social acceptance when participants were informed that people liked them back, both depressed and non-depressed individuals reported feeling happy and accepted. This surprised the researchers, says Hsu, because depression’s symptoms often include a dulled response to positive events that should be enjoyable. However, the positive feeling in depressed individuals disappeared quickly after the period […]

“'But I’m just being honest!' That’s right. You are just being honest. You are not being compassionate, or considerate, or thoughtful, or loving, or polite, or even pleasant. Just. Honest. There are times when someone has to deliver an unpleasant truth. There may even be times when that person is the “just being honest” fanatic. […]

“Student debt cancellation would mean forgone revenue in the near term, but in the long term it could be an economic stimulus worth much more than the immediate cost. Money not spent paying off loans would be spent elsewhere. In that situation, lenders, debt collectors, servicers, guaranty agencies, asset-backed security investors and others who profit […]

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Unfortunately, many are taking this to mean that “Jackie,” the college student who described her brutal gang rape in the original piece, was lying about her ordeal. Based on everything I have read about this story, however, I find that exceedingly unlikely.

One major criticism of the original Rolling Stonepiece has centered on the fact that the reporter, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, did not reach out to the students Jackie accused of rape or to the fraternity where she claimed the assault happened. In the retraction piece, the editors wrote, “Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie’s story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man who she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men who she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her.”

I understand this decision, and I understand how difficult it must’ve been for Erdely to try to keep Jackie comfortable enough to speak publicly about such a traumatic experience. But this goes against journalistic ethics and leaves the journalist, the publication, the readers, and the subject of the piece—Jackie—vulnerable. Since Jackie was already going on the record with her accusation, refusing to try to interview the men she accused would not have helped prevent retribution against her. Unfortunately, that is a risk any time a rape survivor goes public—in fact, any time anyone publicly accuses anybody of anything.

Reporting the story ethically and rigorously doesn’t have to mean disbelieving Jackie or treating her insensitively. There’s a difference between a reporter who says, “I’m going to interview whoever I want regardless of what you want” and a reporter who says, “I understand your concerns, but in order for this story to be as powerful as we want it to be, I need to reach out to the people you’re accusing.” If Jackie refused to speak given these terms, perhaps this was not the right time to try to write this piece. As Audrey White writes at Autostraddle:

Erdely’s job as a reporter required she create a bulletproof story to protect Jackie, avoid libel against the alleged assailants, and achieve her ostensible goal of revealing a culture at UVA and in Greek life that promotes and protects sexual assault. … If respecting Jackie’s wishes meant the reporter couldn’t contact anyone else related to the assault, even to confirm basic details like a person’s membership in the frat or the date of an event, she should have found a different source or approached the narrative from a different angle. As it stands, she put the integrity of her story and of Jackie’s search for resolution at risk.

Indeed, it’s now unclear how willing Jackie was to be a part of this story at all. The Washington Postreports: “Overwhelmed by sitting through interviews with the writer, Jackie said she asked Erdely to be taken out of the article. She said Erdely refused, and Jackie was told that the article would go forward regardless.”

While Jackie doesn’t specify exactly how or why she was overwhelmed by this process, the fact that there appear to be “inconsistencies” in her recollection of her gang rape gives a possible clue.

It’s unclear how exactly believing a survivor “demeans” other survivors. There is not a limited amount of empathy and concern in the world. You can care about survivors like LaBeouf and you can care about survivors who look and act like whatever you think survivors should look and act like.

Some people have said that they can’t believe LaBeouf because he’s an “unreliable narrator.” I was initially tempted to look up and comment briefly on the actor’s apparent history of twisting the truth, but then I realized that it absolutely doesn’t matter. Everyone lies, albeit to varying extents, and lying about rape in particular is so rare that I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt even if he has lied about other things before.

A victim doesn’t have to be relatable or reliable or likable or ‘normal’–or even a good person–for you to believe them. You can be utterly baffled by someone’s every move and still take their victimization seriously. LaBeouf’s bizarre behavior and his sexual violation are in no way mutually exclusive, nor are the latter and his gender. ‘He was asking for it.’ ‘Why didn’t he fight back?’ ‘Why didn’t he say ‘no’?’ ‘He must have wanted it.’ ‘He seems crazy.’ These are flat-out unacceptable things to say to a person of any gender.

Others have pointed out that LaBeouf did not resist the alleged rape. Some of them acknowledge that survivors often “freeze” and are physically unable to resist, but claim that because LaBeouf has stated that for him the reason was that he did not want to compromise his performance art piece, then it’s not “really” rape.

I will grant that this may seem confusing. After all, if he was ableto stop the rape but didn’t, how is it still rape? If he allowed it to happen “for art’s sake,” isn’t that the same as wanting it to happen?

It’s pretty simple, and thinking of rape in terms of affirmative consent may help. Did LaBeouf make it absolutely clear that he wanted this woman to have sex with him? Did he verbally or nonverbally indicate that in a way that would be unmistakable?

Lemon later apologized, stating that he “never want[ed] to suggest that any victim could have prevented a rape.” While this is notable, unfortunately, that’s exactly what was suggested.

While Lemon’s question, which he claimed that he “had to ask,” stands out in its graphic inappropriateness, it’s a common practice to ask survivors of sexual assault why they didn’t “just” this or “simply” that. Whether it comes from prurient interest or supposed concern, many people who try to discuss sexual assault with survivors get caught up in the details of what the survivor could have theoretically, in a perfect universe, if they had thought of it in time rather than experiencing (as many victims do) too much fear or shock, done to prevent the assault.

First of all, it is not the responsibility of people targeted by sexual assault to prevent said assault. The fact that this still needs to be repeated, over and over, is disgraceful.

Second, there are many more survivors than there are rapists, and rapists get away with it because they are rarely held responsible for their actions.

Throughout history, the responsibility for preventing sexual assault has been placed on the shoulders of its potential victims. People like Don Lemon have probably been giving women these “tips” for millennia. Yet it hasn’t seemed to do any good. Isn’t it about time to try something else?

Maybe Lemon should be giving us some tips on how to hold powerful men accountable instead. Here’s a start.

1) Recognize celebrities have power.

In general, people seem to be pretty bad at thinking of social dynamics in terms of power. Many have trouble understanding the fact that white people and men have excess power in our society, for instance.

So do celebrities of any gender, and male celebrities especially. People who are so widely and strongly admired and valued wield a tremendous amount of influence without even intending to. When they do intend to, it gets even stronger.

This is especially true when a celebrity has something a non-celebrity wants—like fame, access, and opportunities. Many (if not all) of the women who have accused Bill Cosby of rape were young aspiring entertainers to whom Cosby offered mentorship. When people dismiss their allegations because some of them took a long time to come forward, ask yourself—what would it take to get you to destroy what might be your only shot at the career you want? Would accusing a famous, beloved man of sexual assault—and probably being dismissed, harassed, or even threatened as a result—really seem worthwhile?

Men like Cosby know this. They know that they have the power to make or break these young women’s chances in the industry. They know that they will be allowed to get away with it. And so they keep doing it.

The #DudesGreetingDudes tweets are hilarious because they’re ridiculous. After all, everyone knows men would never actually talk to each other like that.

But why wouldn’t they?

The common explanation is that street harassment—yes, including the “nice,” non-explicitly sexual kind—is ultimately about asserting male dominance over women, forcing them to give men their time and attention. It wouldn’t make sense for a man to infringe on another man’s mental and physical space in that way.

But I think there’s also a little more going on here, and it has to do with the ways in which men are socialized to view women not only as sexual objects, but as their sole outlet for companionship, support, and affirmation. They’re socialized to view women as caretakers and entertainers, too.

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My Daily Dot piece about Lena Dunham went up yesterday, but I was out walking 14 miles of Manhattan so I didn’t have time to link it here. This was published before Dunham released her statement, which partially (but not nearly entirely) addresses some of my concerns.

Lena Dunham’s recently released memoir, Not That Kind of Girl, has stirred up a lot of controversy, and probably not the controversy that Dunham hoped to stir up.

The passages describe Lena Dunham playing with her sister’s vagina when Dunham was seven and her sister was one year old. She also writes about bribing her sister with candy so that she could kiss her on the lips and masturbating in bed next to her. Their mother was aware of at least some of the behavior, but apparently didn’t think much of it. “My mother didn’t bother asking why I had opened Grace’s vagina,” she writes. “This was within the spectrum of things I did.”

Not all of Dunham’s critics have been conservative columnists, however. Many women, especially women of color, have been active on Twitter, discussing the passages and how they exemplify the abuse that others have faced in childhood. These critics have started a hashtag called #DropDunham, calling on Planned Parenthood to end its partnership with her:

.@PPact you have your own sexual assault hotline and services. The face of your org should not be a sexual predator. #dropdunham

if yr denunciation of Lena Dunham for being an “abuser” includes transparent envy of her career and privilege, you MAYBE invalidate yr point — Emily Gould (@EmilyGould) November 4, 2014

[…]Did Lena Dunham abuse her sister? That depends on a lot of things, some of which we may not know without getting more information. However, there are a number of things about Dunham’s behavior as she describes it herself that bring up red flags.

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Fall in New York City makes me forget all my troubles. The juxtaposition of red, orange, and yellow leaves over blue-glass buildings, the breezy weather, the yellow taxis pressing the leaves into the pavement, the splendor of the botanical garden I visited a few weeks ago–all of it sometimes feels like it was made just for me to wander through.

Today I walked almost five miles through Central Park. I had my headphones off, which I almost never do. Usually I keep them on, even if I don’t want to listen to music, so that I don’t hear the things men say to me. But I wanted to hear the sounds of the park.

I’ve wanted to see the Mall in autumn for a while now–you know, that walkway lined with American Elms that features prominently in When Harry Met Sally.

Well, I saw it. And as I was seeing it, a man stopped me.

“Excuse me miss–”

“No thank you, I’m not interested.”

“Whatever, bitch.”

He started to walk away towards a couple sitting on a bench, but I whipped around like a woman on fire.

“What did you just say to me?”

It’s happened plenty of times, but it still surprises me because it feels so far from where I’ve been. My voice came out clear and strong. I faced him, looked right at him, as the couple on the bench watched on.

“I asked if you’d donate to–”

“No, after that.”

“I said have a nice day.”

“Sure you did.”

I walked away.

What else can you do?

I thought about how easily he had told that absolutely blatant lie. He did not appear nervous. He did not hesitate. His voice was confident, casual. It’s nothing, just a little misunderstanding.

They all lie so easily.

“I said have a nice day.”

“I never touched her, I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

“Of course I didn’t call you the n-word, I’d never do something like that, I’m not a racist, stop pulling the race card.”

“Despite a strong connection between us it became clear to me that our on-and-off dating was unlikely to grow into a larger relationship and I ended things in the beginning of this year. She was upset by this and sent me messages indicating her disappointment that I would not commit to more, and her anger that I was seeing others. After this, in the early spring there began a campaign of harassment, vengeance and demonization against me that would lead to months of anxiety.”

It is not enough for them to simply say that we were wrong or misunderstood. They have to try to paint us as crazed, over-emotional, hysterical bitches, too.

Despite widespread belief that detecting lies is easy, research shows that people do barely better than chance at it. This man I encountered in the Mall was showing none of the signs associated with spewing complete unadulterated grade-A bullshit. Yet that’s exactly what he was doing.

It’s not just lying, either. It’s gaslighting, too. I’ve been through this many times. They try to get me to believe that what I absolutely just saw or heard did not really happen. Nothing to see here. Move along.

It is difficult, nearly impossible, for a woman (or another person affected by systemic oppression like this) to relearn the skill of trusting your own perception. There are many things that have happened to me that I’m no longer quite certain happened simply because somebody told me they didn’t. Like an altered Soviet photograph with a space where some persona non grata used to be, these memories feel shaky and uncertain to me.

Not this time. This man called me a bitch. He called me a bitch because I politely said no. Never forget that. I will never forget that, no matter what anyone says.

I am sure that there are people who would find it easier to believe that I, a person without hearing impairment, who was standing at most two feet away from this man in a relatively quiet place, either managed to mishear “Have a nice day” as “Whatever, bitch,” or that I deliberately accused an innocent man of saying such a thing (Why? To what possible end?) than that a man might use a slur against a woman who refuses to give him her time or attention.

It’s not just that these things happen so commonly. It’s that they happen so commonly and yet people continue to believe them to be the fantastical inventions of some jealous/delusional/over-emotional/vengeful/uptight/slutty/prudish/ugly/crazy bitch. Instead, they propose explanations that are more fantastical by orders of magnitude, such as the idea that I could have somehow heard “Whatever, bitch” instead of “Have a nice day.” Or that someone could believe themselves to have been sexually assaulted when nothing of the sort happened. Or that they would willfully lie about it and have their names dragged through the mud in front of the silent, shrugging world.

And I thought, too, about the couple on the bench, looking at the man and at me. Maybe they thought I was a crazy bitch. Maybe they knew exactly what was going on. Maybe they were confused and didn’t know what to think.

Regardless, I cannot concern myself too much with the opinion of the couple on the bench, because I will never see the couple on the bench again. I will, on the other hand, have to live as a woman in this world for the rest of my life. Talking back will not end sexism and it is not an option available to everyone. But it replenishes me. It is a power that I have. I know it is a power because if it wasn’t, men wouldn’t be so afraid of it.

The photos in this post are all ones I took during that walk today. I included them here for a reason, and it wasn’t to show off my photography. It was to give those of you who haven’t experienced it a sense of that juxtaposition, of having almost every joyful, peaceful, meaningful moment in your life punctuated somehow by oppression.

I am not a happy person, not even when I’m not depressed, but I am a person who constantly marvels at the world–the physical world, the social world. Yet sexism follows me everywhere, taints almost all of my experiences and memories. I can’t get away from it, not even in the twisted paths and falling leaves of Central Park. I cannot escape it no matter where I go.

Not three minutes after my encounter with the man who called me a bitch, another man approached me. I said the same sort of thing as I said last time, only my voice had gone cold and hard as the ancient boulders in the park. This man did not call me a bitch. He just said, “Have a nice day,” in the cruelest tone I’ve ever heard those words said. I thought, Too late.

After that I put my headphones on, concluding that particular experiment. As the world around me went quiet, I felt those headphones like a shield around my mind. The singing birds, the fountains, the intriguing conversations all became dull and fuzzy, like the way your mind feels when you’re sick.

But I didn’t turn the music on. Instead I imagined my own music. Sometimes I thought of the Russian songs my parents and their friends and I sing around campfires. Other times I made up my own songs. It comforted me.

I didn’t feel sad, exactly. I felt suddenly disconnected, like I was experiencing the world from inside a bubble. I felt very alone. I felt weary. I also felt grateful for the privileges I do have, without which this situation could so easily have been much worse.

But I thought about it for the rest of the walk, because it had lodged itself, as these things often do, in my mind like a splinter that itches and burns.

Central Park is a wonder this time of year. If you live nearby, I encourage you to visit it, especially if you, unlike me, have the freedom to be able to take your headphones off, let it fill your ears up with its beautiful noise.

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I haven’t written anything about gamergate because others have said it so much better than I could. Here are some links and excerpts from my favorite pieces about this whole sordid situation. Feel free to leave your own in the comments.

I now believe the most dangerous time for a woman with online visibility is the point at which others are seen to be listening, “following”, “liking”, “favoriting”, retweeting. In other words, the point at which her readers have (in the troll’s mind) “drunk the Koolaid”. Apparently, that just can’t be allowed.

From the hater’s POV, you (the Koolaid server) do not “deserve” that attention. You are “stealing” an audience. From their angry, frustrated point of view, the idea that others listen to you is insanity. From their emotion-fueled view you don’t have readers you have cult followers. That just can’t be allowed.

You must be stopped. And if they cannot stop you, they can at least ruin your quality of life. A standard goal, in troll culture, I soon learned, is to cause “personal ruin”. They aren’t alltrolls, though. Some of those who seek to stop and/or ruin you are misguided/misinformed but well-intended. They actually believe in a cause, and they believe you (or rather the Koolaid you’re serving) threatens that cause.

I’m not scared of desperately uncool cultural reactionaries like Jack Thompson or anti-witchcraft Harry Potter burners. I’m scared of the people who do hold cultural power, who have the loud voice, who are, in fact, the cool kids, but think they’re embattled underdogs. I’m scared of the people who think that because disco was “taking over music” they had the right to “fight back” bullying and attacking disco performers and fans.

I’m scared of people who look at someone like Zoe Quinn, an individual who makes free indie games, or Anita Sarkeesian, an individual who makes free YouTube videos, and honestly think that these women are a powerful “corrupt” force taking away the freedom of the vast mob of angry young male gamers and the billion-dollar industry that endlessly caters to them, and that working to shut them up and drive them out somehow constitutes justice. The dominant demographic voice in some given fandom or scene feeling attacked by an influx of new, different fans and rallying the troops against “oppression” in reaction is not at all unique. It happens everywhere, all the time.

But let’s be honest: It’s usually guys doing it. Our various “culture wars” tend to boil down to one specific culture war, the one about men wanting to feel like Real Men and lashing out at the women who won’t let them. Whenever men feel like masculinity is under attack, men get dangerous. Because that’s exactly what masculinity teaches you to do, what masculinity is about. Defending yourself with disproportionate force against any loss of power? That’s what masculinity is.

#Gamergate, as they have treated myself and peers in our industry, is a hate group. This word, again, should not lend them any mystique or credence. Rather it should illuminate the fact that even the most nebulous and inconsistent ideas can proliferate wildly if strung onto the organizational framework of the hate group, which additionally gains a startling amount of power online. #Gamergate is a hate group, and they are all the more dismissible for it. And the longer we treat them otherwise, the longer I fear for our industry’s growth.

GamerGate, to date, has taught us nothing. OK, maybe it’s taught us that certain men are horrible and have no shame in announcing their hatred of women to the world in the most hideous manner available to them. If GamerGate really was about ethics, Wu or Sarkeesian wouldn’t be going through what they are.

Until female developers, critics, columnists, and bloggers feel comfortable doing their jobs—which is to discuss gaming and expand the medium to wider and wider audiences—the ethics debate will be backgrounded by boisterous boys complaining that their toys aren’t how they used to be: i.e., made by dudes and played by dudes. That’s living in the past, though. Today, Peach can spank Bowser’s backside on Super Smash Bros., one of the highest-rated action games of 2014 features a kick-ass woman protagonist, and 52 percent of gamers are female.

Something, not someone, has to die—and that something goes deeper than GamerGate. I don’t have the answer to the question of how we prevent bias in the media, but I sure as hell know that we can’t sit idly by and just hope that the hatred goes away. Gaming hasn’t even reached the middle of its own excellent adventure, but it’s gonna suck if it doesn’t pick up more princesses along the way. So how about we all calm the fuck down before someone really gets hurt?

What women like Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, Adria Richards, Kathy Sierra, and others have gone through, and continue to go through, all for having the unmitigated temerity to be women in gaming and tech, is incredible. And reprehensible. And shameful beyond description. And harmful.

Actively, ongoingly, profoundly harmful. Individually harmful, and reverberatingly harmful, as other women see what happens to women who do what they do and calculate whether it’s worth it to pursue their passion, in exchange for, potentially, their lives.

Women are being harassed, and abused, and threatened, and terrorized. Women have killed themselves. If the word “hurt” is to have any meaning at all, we need to stop saying that things need to change before someone gets hurt, and start saying plainly that things need to change because people are already being hurt.

1) The main target of #GamerGate is not a journalist. She’s a video game developer. Holding her accountable for “ethics in journalism” is like telling your accountant that it’s his job to negotiate peace treaties in the Middle East. While the attacks on Zoe Quinn aren’t, like the rest of this list, attacks on ethical journalism itself, the fact that this all started off with a non sequitur shows that, on the long list of shit #GamerGate cares about, integrity in journalism doesn’t even rate.

2) The second biggest target of #GamerGate is an exemplar of clean journalism. If what you don’t like about gaming journalism is that it’s too cozy with the industry and therefore the writers are afraid to be critical, then your fucking hero should be Anita Sarkeesian. She funded herself with Kickstarter and not industry money. She is harshly critical of video games, even as she is a fan. She is the ideal of what a critical gaming journalist should be: Knowledgeable, critical, fair, thorough and utterly non-corrupt.

Throughout GG, I’ve undertaken a survey to find out what people want from reviews. Some of the answers highlight the above issue:

“Basically, a review that describes the game without involving the author’s personal opinion on it.”

“Focus on the gameplay and technical aspects, not the story and art style.”

“I mean that I want a game to be judged solely on its mechanics, story, immersiveness, strength of character and level of involvement, and judgement be based solely on that. Not whether a game is “problematic.”

These are all totally valid things to want from a review – it’s okay to not care about social critique – but the inclusion of these things isn’t corruption. It’s just a style of review people don’t like.

The irony of this situation is massive enough to develop its own gravitational field. These harassers want Sarkeesian to stop talking about misogyny in video games. So they unleash horrifying misogyny on Sarkeesian herself. To, I guess, make the point that video games are just fine? That misogyny in games is having no broader cultural effect? That there is no problem here? Because this kind of behavior is normal? If I wasn’t half convinced that the men harassing Sarkeesian weren’t in fact actual trolls — like, the kind that live under bridges with only rocks for friends — I would wonder how they’d feel if their mom or girlfriend or wife was receiving the same threats.

My friend Quinn told me about a folder on her computer called, “The Ones We’ve Lost.” They are the letters she’s gotten from young girls who dream of being game developers, but are terrified of the environment they see. I nearly broke into tears as I told her I had a folder filled with the same. The truth is, even if we stopped Gamergate tomorrow, it will have already come at too high a cost.

So when Anita Sarkeesian tweeted that “gamergate is the new name for a group that has been harassing me for 2 years,” she was factually correct. Many of the most consistent users of #GamerGate are inextricably linked to harassment of Ms. Sarkeesian and other women. I’ve just shown you 20 of them, all of whom are happily welcomed into the GamerGate movement and not censured in any way for their actions. I’m sure this list will grow as more people share their experiences.

These people have spent the last two years harassing and demeaning women in and out of the games industry. You know what they haven’t spent the last two years doing? Talking about ethics in journalism.

There may be ethical, honest people involved in #GamerGate. But a few good apples won’t magically make a rotten barrel edible. And #GamerGate is rotten to the core.

It’s being referred to by those engaging in the harassment as the “Zoe Quinn cheating scandal,” a phrasing that implies, ridiculously, that the private relationship snafus and infidelities of a video game developer rise to the level of public interest. But even the misogynist harassers of the Internet know it’s a stretch to justify abusing someone for garden variety infidelity. So, in a desperate attempt to justify this nonsense, Quinn’s ex and the harassers are accusing Quinn of an “ethics” violation, accusing her, no joke, of using sex to get a favorable review from Kotaku.

The fact that the review she was accused of “buying” doesn’t exist hasn’t slowed the self-righteous haranguing, of course. That’s because the “ethics” question is a paper-thin excuse for what’s really going on, which is that the video game world is thick with misogynists who are aching to swarm on any random woman held up for them to hate, no matter what the pretext.

one of the biggest sources of paranoia i took from reading through my first 4chan thread about this issue is that social justice activism will inevitably destroy communities like 4chan. these people feel so disempowered in their lives that they head to communities like 4chan or reddit to be able to feel some sort of empowerment, to act out on something, to feel part of something bigger. this is where the whole mythos of Anonymous comes from. that a lone person with a computer has a tremendous power to take down the shadowy elite. but in that act, there’s no accountability, and no moral code. anyone with the resources can mobilize people to target anyone they see fit. sometimes it attacks against the interests of power, but just as often it’s a conservative, reactionary anger that comes out of disillusionment and fear, and gets constantly externalized onto marginalized people, especially women and queer people.

“Social Justice Warriors” is a term used often by these sort of people, and it’s a term whose pejorative use perplexes me, because aside from the source of its invention, it sounds like a really badass thing to be. I’d much rather label myself a Social Justice Warrior than a warrior for…whatever it is that these people are warriors for. Social justice is such an inherently positive thing – literally everyone benefits from greater equality – that it’s impossible to see its enemies as anything but sociopathic. Hatred of Social Justice Warriors can be seen as a broader hatred of social justice itself.

Central to the self-centred psychology of these people is that they see themselves as the targets of a grand conspiracy of feminist, progressive journalists and game developers that seeks to destroy their ability to…something. They have no actual issue. It’s all perceived persecution at the hands of political correctness. These “theories” are so narcissistic, so devoid of substance, that the only way to explain them is through delusion. And I mean, I get it – justifying one’s shitty behaviour with a made-up conspiracy probably feels better than confronting the painful truth that one is an asshole. They think they’re part of a “silent majority”, but the real silent majority is the one that either isn’t aware of their ridiculous conspiracy theories, or understands that there’s simply no reasoning with people who are so obviously out of their minds. It’s the same kind of fictional oppression old white folks claim about foreign immigrants who are still generally less well-off than they are. The moment a woman – or even someone who empathises with women – muscles in on “their” territory (which hasn’t actually ever been “theirs”), they’re off, spouting slurs, giving the fingers at intersections, and publishing their banking details on hate sites.

To do this, he downloaded 130,524 articles from 37 RSS feeds of 23 outlets, including The Escapist, Rock Paper Shotgun, CVG, Edge Online, Eurogamer, Gamasutra, Game Informer, GamePolitics, GamesBeat, GamesIndustry International, GameSpot, GamesRadar, IGN, IndieGames, Joystiq, Kotaku, Massively, MCV, NowGamer, PocketGamer.biz, Polygon, Shacknews and VG24/7, published over a period of twelve months. He then did a search on how often these games articles mentioned sexism, feminism, or misogyny.

The result? Over a period of one year, 0.41% of 130,524 articles referenced feminism, feminist, sexism, sexist, misogyny, and misogynist explicitly.

That’s who is behind this entire situation: anti-woman trolls who intentionally distort the meaning of the word “ethics” to further their own agenda and mislead their followers. There are some beating the #GamerGate drum who sincerely believe that it’s not related to misogyny or the persistent attacks on Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn, that it’s simply about keeping the games press accountable. It’s impossible to extricate that hashtag from its roots, though, which grew out of unconscionable smears and threats against two prominent women in gaming merely because they are prominent women in gaming. All the conspiracies and trumped-up claims of “evidence” of collusion among developers, press agents and the press spread by the #GamerGate founders are lies and distortions aimed at driving Quinn, Sarkeesian and other women out of videogames. Whether it’s hate, fear or simply the grotesque joy horrible people find in maliciously denigrating others, this entire #GamerGate nonsense is built on silencing women and shutting them out of games.

That’s the scandal here. Not that some journalists are friendly with some game designers, or that review copies of games are often sent early to critics (an entrenched practice that occurs across the entire spectrum of tech and entertainment journalism, and which is crucial to informing readers in a timely fashion). It’s that a vocal minority of videogame fans who tend to congregate at sites like 4chan and Reddit, who blanket twitter and comment sections with hate and anger, and who adopt the exclusionary identity of “gamer” have united to intimidate and silence videogame fans, developers and writers who aren’t like them or don’t think like them. And the leaders of that movement, the ones who stir up the most resentment and convince their followers that it’s not about hate but ethics, the YouTube “personalities” and condescending Breitbart hacks and, uh, Firefly’s Adam Baldwin, are all well-established opponents of equality and social justice. Some are trolls, some are disingenuous, politically motivated bullies, and none of them are worth the attention.

Claiming not all gamers, Redditors, or Channers are responsible for despicable behavior is as deflective, tone deaf, and self-centered as the now lampooned ‘not all men’ response. It’s obviously ‘not all,’ but it’s still far too many. Gamers are being played, and not by journalists.

If people want to save these communities they’ll have to do better than throwing their hands up and saying “it wasn’t us!” when the world breaks into their speakeasies. Smoke them out and band up these silent majorities you speak of. As with anyone, you have to earn the respect you think you deserve.

The default assumption of the gaming industry has always been that its customer is a young, straight, middle-class white man, and so games have always tended to cater to the perceived interests of this narrow demographic. Gamergate is right about this much: When developers make games targeting or even acknowledging other sorts of people, and when video game fans say they want more such games, this actually does represent an assault on the prerogatives of the young, middle-class white men who mean something very specific when they call themselves gamers. Gamergate offers a way for this group, accustomed to thinking of themselves as the fixed point around which the gaming-industrial complex revolves, to stage a sweeping counteroffensive in defense of their control over the medium. The particulars may be different, and the stakes may be infinitely lower, but the dynamic is an old one, the same one that gave rise to the Know Nothing Party and the anti-busing movement and the Moral Majority. And this is the key to understanding Gamergate: There actually is a real conflict here, something like the one perceived by the Tea Partier waving her placard about the socialist Muslim Kenyan usurper in the White House.

There is a reason why, in all the Gamergate rhetoric, you hear the echoes of every other social war staged in the last 30 years: overly politically correct, social-justice warriors, the media elite, gamers are not a monolith. There is also a reason why so much of the rhetoric amounts to a vigorous argument that Being a gamer doesn’t mean you’re sexist, racist, and stupid—a claim no one is making. Co-opting the language and posture of grievance is how members of a privileged class express their belief that the way they live shouldn’t have to change, that their opponents are hypocrites and perhaps even the real oppressors. This is how you get St. Louisans sincerely explaining that Ferguson protestors are the real racists, and how you end up with an organized group of precisely the same video game enthusiasts to whom an entire industry is catering honestly believing that they’re an oppressed minority. From this kind of ideological fortification, you can stage absolutely whatever campaigns you deem necessary.

There’s no easy way to say this. I am a massive target for Gamergate/8chan.coright now and it is having horrible consequences for my life. They tried to hack my company financially on Saturday, taking out our company’s assets. They’ve tried to impersonate me on Twitter in an effort to discredit me. They are making burner accounts to send lies about my private life to prominent journalists. They’ve devastated the metacritic users’ score of my game, Revolution 60, lowering it to 0.3 out of 100.

With all of this, my only hope is that my colleagues in the industry will stand by me — and recognize the massive target I made myself standing up to these lunatics.

I woke up twice last night to noises in the room, gasping with fear that someone was there to murder me. I can barely function without fear or jumpiness or hesitation. I’ve been driven from my home. My husband says he feels like he’s been shot.

But I have to be honest: I don’t give a fuck.

I am mad as hell at these people, and I’m not going to let them keep destroying the women I love and respect.

Does feminism make women bad at sex? Some “sexperts” would say yes, if being bad at sex means expecting to get pleasure out of it. In a blog for Yahoo’s lifestyle section, Dr. Pam Spurr, author ofSensational Sex, warns of the dangers of equality in the bedroom. “In the past few decades, women have learnt that orgasms, like voting and equal pay, are their right,” says Spurr. “This tide of female emancipation has led to a ‘princess-and-the-pea syndrome': her ‘pea’ gets all the attention, while everything else gets sidelined… The pea’s demands will eclipse those of your penis.”

Like Dr. Spurr, maybe some feel horrified and intimidated at the prospect of empowered women seeking out and expecting sexual pleasure from their partners, but in reality, feminism and good sex are not at all mutually exclusive. One can even lead to the other, if you use feminism to examine your own sexual ideas and interests.

To be clear, having feminist views does not automatically make you “good at sex,” whatever being good at sex means to you or your partners. You can be bad at sex and also be [insert literally any descriptor here]. You can be good at sex without identifying as a feminist, although I’d argue that you cannot be good at sex if you are unable to respect others’ boundaries.

However, feminism can inspire us to challenge myths and stereotypes that can make sex scary, stressful, or boring. Thinking critically about gender allows us to abandon tired and outdated ideas about What Men Want and What Women Want and what they “should” do with each other in bed. Here’s what feminism can teach us about sex.

1) Consent.

For decades now, feminists have been challenging dominant views of sex as something men must try to “get” from women, who can agree to “give” it by lying back and thinking of England. Feminism also challenges the idea that anyone of any gender ever “owes” anyone of any gender sex (though, usually, it’s women who are presumed to owe it to men, perhaps in return for a paid restaurant bill or a committed relationship).

Moreover, thanks to feminism, more and more people are starting to understand that consent is not just about “no means no,” but also about “yes means yes.” Being good in bed isn’t just about knowing the right things to do, but also about knowing when not to do anything at all. If you choose “YES, PLEASE” rather than “Ok, that’s fine” as the standard for consent, you’ll be a better partner, not to mention a better person.

Or, to rephrase: A British YouTube personality named Sam Pepper recently made a video of himself sexually assaulting multiple women, and then posted that video online, presumably without the permission of the women being assaulted in it.

To its credit, YouTube has taken the video down after a large outcry from (former) fans, various well-known YouTubers, and many Tumblr and Twitter users. In its place is now an odd notice: “This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube’s policy on nudity or sexual content.” As though the problem were “sexual content,” rather than sexual assault.

I’ll skip over all the tired rehashing of how this sort of thing seems to be Pepper’s M.O. as a YouTuber and as a human being, how Pepper’s boringly regressive ideas about women are easy to glean from the videos, how there’s now a backlash calling his detractors “butthurt little pussies” and “tumblr cunts,” how folks are claiming, as they always do, that this is somehow okay because some of the women laughed or smiled (because that’s what we’re taught to do to survive, and besides, other women literally said “I don’t like that”). Because all of this happens every single time and it’s a cycle with which many of us are now resignedly familiar. So I’ll jump straight to the analysis.

Sexual assault is not (just) a prank. A prank is putting rubber insects or plastic poop in your friend’s bed. A prank is coming home from school with a fake note from the principal to your mom. A prank is, in one slightly extreme case that I heard of, a bunch of friends getting together and having tons flowers and cards saying “Sorry for your loss” delivered to another friend at work, forcing him to explain to his concerned coworkers who he “lost.”

Pranks can run the gamut from wonderfully hilarious for everyone involved to scary, spiteful, and cruel. Pranks can cross the line. Even if we are to believe that Pepper did this because he thought it would be “funny” rather than because he wanted to make women feel violated and creeped-out, then this is a very unambiguous example of a prank that crosses the line. Specifically, it crosses the line into sexual violence and criminal activity.

Of course, this isn’t uncommon. Daniel Tosh made a video about touching women’s stomachs (specifically, their belly fat) and also encouraged his fans to make their own (which they did). YouTubers LAHWF and Stuart Edge made videos of themselves kissing random women on the lips without their consent and of themselves picking women up off the ground and trying to carry them away. All of this is assault. Not a joke. Not a prank. Assault against women.

Sam Pepper and Daniel Tosh and their sympathizers appear to believe that there are two mutually exclusive categories of human speech and behavior: “just a joke” and “not a joke.” Moreover, these categories are so painfully clear and obvious that anyone who mischaracterizes “just a joke” as “not a joke” is “an idiot,” “a r****d,” “a stupid feminist bitch,” etc. The only dimension on which items in the “just a joke” category can be judged is funniness. They cannot be judged on, for instance, ethics. So if you try to judge those items based on how ethically acceptable they are, then you’ve clearly placed them into the “not a joke” category and are therefore “an idiot,” “a r***d,” and so on.

Obviously, a joke can be funny or not funny to a given person. But it can also be experienced by a given person as not a joke at all, especially since many types of humor seem to rely on “saying a commonly-believed/-endorsed thing and then acting like you don’t really believe/endorse that thing” as their main mechanism. A joke can also be hurtful or unethical, even if everyone understands that it is a joke.

I hate to keep trotting out that “intent isn’t magic,” but it really isn’t. When I am being sexually assaulted, I don’t care what the person assaulting me truly deeply believes about this encounter and what it means to them and how they feel about it in their heart of hearts. I am being sexually assaulted. I would like them to stop sexually assaulting me now.

Now, if someone stumbles on the train and accidentally touches my breasts or butt, I might be momentarily startled, but I’m usually okay because I understand that they did not intend to touch me. Sam Pepper intended to grab the asses of the women whose asses he grabbed; he just didn’t intend–or pretends he didn’t intend–for them to feel uncomfortable or disgusted by this. Well, unfortunately, you can’t will people’s feelings in or out of existence.

Pepper later claimed that the video was a “social experiment”–the last resort of those who can no longer even claim a botched attempt at humor. If you unpack this a little bit, “social experiment” usually just means “doing something wrong/weird/unusual/inappropriate to see how people will respond.” You know, like a baby who discovers the ability to throw toys out of the crib to see what will happen.

There is no need to conduct an experiment to see how women will respond to being sexually assaulted by a stranger. It happens all the time, and has been happening all the time for centuries. If you’re curious, you could try speaking to a woman.

This also seems to be contradicted by another of Pepper’s claims, which is that everyone in the video gave “prior consent.” If the women knew exactly what was going to happen, how is it an “experiment” or a “prank”? And even if they did, how are viewers–some of whom may be survivors of sexual assault–meant to understand the original video?

On Twitter, Laci Green responded to Pepper’s defense of the video:

Call it a “prank” or an “experiment”, if you touch someone w/o consent, and promote that as comedy, you are part of the problem. @SamPepper

Nevertheless, it is entirely possible–and I am even willing to briefly entertain the idea–that Sam Pepper absolutely got the consent of everyone involved (for the touching and for the placement of the video online for the perusal of 2 million fans), that nobody was uncomfortable, that everybody involved had a great time (and the women who appeared uncomfortable in the video were just acting [why?]), but what concerns me is, as always, that others will see in Pepper’s defenses a get-out-of-assault-free card. “It was just a joke!” “She’s only pretending to be creeped out as part of a social experiment!”

Of course, this sort of thing already happens all the time. Rapists say that they were absolutely certain that they had the person’s consent and were totally not raping them on purpose, of course not, what kind of person do you think they are?

But believing that you have someone’s consent and totally not intending to assault them isn’t the same thing as actually having their consent and actually not assaulting them.

Addendum: Despite the title of the post I linked to just above, and the views I’ve expressed here in general, I no longer stand by the claim, “sexual assault isn’t funny.” The reason I don’t stand by it is because it’s false. Sexual assault is funny. To certain people. “Sexual assault isn’t funny” is more a statement that I wish were true than one that is actually true at the moment.

Unfortunately, she may be about to experience that for herself. Watson recently gave a moving speech to the United Nations about gender equality and why men should care about it. Speaking on behalf of a campaign called HeForShe, she reiterated what feminism means, what rights feminists fight for, and how men are hurt by gender stereotypes, too.

The speech went viral, but not everyone liked it. Anti-feminist 4chan users and redditors whined. A site called Emma You Are Next, launched by a group of prolific Internet hoax artists, counted down to midnight on Sept. 24, when nude photos of the star would allegedly leak. Originally, the website read, “Never forget, the biggest to come thus far,” alluding to the Celebgate photo scandal. Later that sentence was removed and replaced with an updated date and time for the leak.

On 4chan, users raved:

It is real and going to happen this weekend. That feminist bitch Emma is going to show the world she is as much of a whore as any woman.

She makes stupid feminist speeches at UN, and now her nudes will be online, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

The threats against Emma Watson stand as a stark counterpoint to the discussions that followed the original nude photo leak. Women, we were informed, just need to be “smart” and “careful” about their online presence. Deleting nude photos is no longer enough; we must not even take them to begin with, because someone could always find a way to hack into our iCloud accounts and steal them.

It is “only natural,” we were told, for men to seek out nude photos of famous beautiful women and share them with other men. It’s “just what happens” what you choose to “put yourself out there,” you see.

Yet there’s a long history of sex-related violence and exploitation being used intentionally as punishment against people, especially women, who step out of line. It’s not “just what happens,” it’s not “only natural,” like getting electrocuted if you touch a live wire. It’s done on purpose to deter people from doing things that make men feel threatened, or to take one’s anger out on them once they’ve done it.

The threats against Emma Watson are just the latest example of this. A few hackers didn’t like what she had to say about feminism. They didn’t like that a woman was able to access a platform so noteworthy. They didn’t like that her speech was so well-received and went so viral. They didn’t like that a “feminist bitch” was being heard. So they threatened to retaliate. Read the rest here.After it became clear this morning that no nude photos were released, I tweeted some stuff:

P.S. The fact that the Emma Watson thing was a hoax does not change the intent of the trolls who did it. @dailydot — Miri (@sondosia) September 24, 2014

They wanted to humiliate, terrify, and punish a woman for speaking out, so they made a threat. @dailydot — Miri (@sondosia) September 24, 2014

It’s very fortunate that the threat wasn’t carried out, but don’t forget that it would’ve been had they had the photos. @dailydot — Miri (@sondosia) September 24, 2014

We see proof of this all the time in cases of “revenge porn,” whether the targets are celebrities or not. @dailydot — Miri (@sondosia) September 24, 2014

I will not just shut up about this and just be grateful that they didn’t leak any nude photos (THIS time). @dailydot — Miri (@sondosia) September 24, 2014